1. Ellur: the Divergence

This world of ours is in chaos, so I’m seeking solace in organizing my own world. You’re welcome to join me in this escape 🙂

First off, the big news! The world of At War’s Edge finally has a name: Ellur.

• Linguistic side note: one of Ellur’s most ancient languages, Iledrin, is a relative to both Basque and Proto-Uralic (don’t ask how). Lur is “land, earth” in Basque, and *elä- is a Proto-Uralic root that means “to live”. So, in Iledrin, Ellur is something like “land of life”. End of side note.

So, what is Ellur? It’s Earth, in a parallel universe. In a very different parallel universe.

It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly the two universes diverged, since nobody in either of them knows how they started. What is clear is how they diverged: Ellur has the fifth (or is it sixth, now?) fundamental interaction, which is absent from Earth. Scholars call it the thaumic interaction, but it’s more commonly referred to as magic. 

Billions of years ago, when Ellur was capturing its moon and forming its continents, its thaumic field was already very strong. As a result, life on Ellur emerged earlier and in a whole different way than it did on Earth.

That first life was the leralath (singular lerale). The leralath are sentient manifestations of several different natural forces, elements, and even processes. Why some natural forces became sentient and not others is unclear, and, in general, very little is known of their beginnings and nature. Most of them are reluctant, or perhaps unable, to communicate with other life forms. It seems that their sentience varies, and those who do possess it only developed it gradually. If any of them have clear memories of the planet’s formation, they haven’t shared them. The twelve most communicative leralath in later ages became known as the Great Spirits, but some scholars theorize that everything on Ellur is in fact a lerale.

The presence of the leralth on Ellur drove Ellur and Earth further and further apart as time went on. Consciously or unconsciously, they reshaped landmasses and sent evolution in strange new directions. The scholars still debate whether the otherlings – several intelligent species native to Ellur – are accidental byproducts of the leralath activity, their offspring, their creations, or simply the natural result of evolution in a thaumically-charged environment. 

Next up – 2. Ellur: Otherlings and Humans